MAY 1 "HUMAN BEHAVIOR SIMILAR TO LABORATORY RATS"
Many years earlier, the psychologist B.F. Skinner
had devised the operant conditioning chamber or “Skinner Box” in which a lever
press by an animal triggered either a reinforcing stimulus such as delivery of
food or water, or a punishing stimulus like a painful foot shock. Olds and
Milner soon adapted the chamber so that a lever press would deliver direct
brain stimulation through the implanted electrodes. What resulted was perhaps
the most dramatic experiment in the history of behavioral neuroscience; rats would press the lever as many as 7,000
times per hour to stimulate their brains.
They weren't stimulating a “curiosity center”
at all-- this was a reward circuit, the activation of which was much more
powerful than any natural stimulus. ~A series of amazing experiments revealed
that rats preferred reward circuit stimulation to food (even when they were
hungry) and water (even when they were thirsty).
Self-stimulating male rats would ignore a
female in heat and would repeatedly cross foot shock-delivering flood grids to
reach the lever.
Female rats would abandon their newborn nursing
pups to continually press the lever. Some rats would self-stimulate 2,000 times
per hour for 24 hours, to the exclusion of all other activities.
They had to be unhooked from the apparatus to
prevent starvation!
Those conducting the experiment had to unhook
the rats from the apparatus to prevent starvation.
What this reveals is human nature is not far
from this behavior as we have witnessed first hand and do we think that this
side of our nature is not going to be exploited by the Devil and secondly, do
we think that the Devil would ever “unhook” us from the apparatus and/or
bondage/addiction to prevent starvation? Just look around and you will see the
answer to that.
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